Global semiconductor sales to decline this year

Beancounters at analyst firm Gartner have added up some numbers and divided them by their collective shoe sizes and predicted a 9.6 percent  decline in worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2019.

Big G said that the market will fall to $429 billion from the $475 billion recorded last year.

The drop means OEMs and hardware suppliers in the channel will see demand-driven oversupply in the DRAM market that will slash pricing down by 42.1 percent. All this will last until the second quarter of 2020.

NCC increases sales team

NCC Group is sprucing up its sales team to improve its UK business.

The cybersecurity VAR posted overall revenue of £250.7 million in its preliminary results for its fiscal year ending 30 May 2019. This represents a seven and a half percent rise on last year’s figure.

But its Escrow business witnessed a decline of nearly three per cent to £38 million, with a 10.7 percent increase in North America offset by a six and a half percent decline in the UK.

CEO Adam Palser said that the company has added 44 heads to its UK escrow sales teams in order to return it to growth.

Softcat getting the cream

Softcat has provided an update saying that its fourth fiscal quarter is going well.

Softcat plc primarily acts as a value-added IT reseller and IT infrastructure solutions provider in the United Kingdom. The company manages technology for businesses and public sector organisations, such as software licensing, workplace technology, networking, security, and cloud and datacenter.

Customers are ready for SD-WAN

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and concluded that customers are keen on the much-hyped SD-WAN tech.

The analyst house is expecting impressive growth in the SD-WAN infrastructure market with the enterprise segment of the networking market growing at a 30.8 percent compound annual growth rate between 2018 and 2023 to hit revenues of $5.25 billion.

IDC’s Network Infrastructure expert Rohit Mehra said that SD-WAN is one of the fastest-growing segments of the network infrastructure market and several factors were driving the growth. Traditional WANs were failing to meet the needs of digital businesses, “especially as it relates to supporting SaaS apps and multi- and hybrid-cloud usage”.

Honeywell launches new software partner programme

Honeywell has launched its Independent Software Vendor Programme, giving partners and software vendors a platform to serve distribution centres, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and transportation and logistics customers.

The global programme allows software vendors to join Honeywell’s ecosystem, which includes distributors and reseller partners specialising in mobility, scanners, printers and voice solutions. Vendors can collaborate and work with customers to find solutions for Honeywell’s Mobility, Edge-enabled mobile computers and data capture products.

UKFast grows fast

Cloud player UKFast has seen revenues have increased by double digits thanks to enterprise customers looking for private or hybrid cloud support has helped UKFast deliver substantial numbers for its last financial year.

In 2018 the outfit saw a 12 percent increase in organic revenue and a climb to £53.9 million in revenues from £48.3 million a year earlier.

The enterprise hosting division did the best and now accounts for 43 percent of total sales. Staffing levels increased by 23 percent as it hired more cloud security, networks and remote desktop service expertise.

Gartner roasts big cloud

Analyst outfit Gartner has waded into the Big Public Cloud providers saying that they have reliability issues and poor services.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud remain in the Leaders segment, while Oracle, Alibaba and IBM retain their positions in the Niche Players quadrant. However, AWS, Microsoft and Google were blasted by Big G.

RingCentral releases new products for partners

Cloudy outfit RingCentral has released a new generation of cloud communications solutions to its channel partners.

For those not in the know, RingCentral provides a single cloud platform with multimodal communications capabilities including voice, video, online meetings, team messaging, and digital customer engagement.

With Westcon acting as a master agent for RingCentral initially in the UK and Ireland, it is anticipated that Westcon will draw on its established EMEA footprint to extend RingCentral’s reach across multiple markets in Europe.

Anderson Zaks partners with Smart Volution

UK-based multichannel Payment Gateway outfit Anderson Zaks, is crossing its RedCard product with Smart Volution’s Register EPOS small business solution.

The big idea is that they will provide retail, hospitality and beauty services markets with a modern, cost-efficient, electronic point of service solution that is device and service provider agnostic, for authorisation, settlement and value-added transaction services.  Anderson Zaks’ RedCard processing software supports Chip and PIN, contactless and e-commerce transactions, complementing Smart Volution’s flexible epos solution, designed for cafes, salons and independent retailers.

Cinos unifies with its Unified Communications arm

Cinos has folded its separate Unified Communications firm, Cinos Communication Services (CCS), into its core business. The move follows a four-year incubation period for CCS and will see combined revenues of more than £20 million.

The company said the merger acknowledges the market’s need for IT and AV convergence at the customer level, where AV assets are increasingly purchased as part of the complete IT solution. The unified business’ primary market will be the public sector, with around 70 percent of customer projects being NHS, police, and blue light centred.

Eurostop scores George Fisher contract

Eurostop has announced that outdoor clothing and equipment store George Fisher has selected its retail system for its in-store retail operations.

The store is using Eurostop’s connected retail solution to manage stock and sales for all clothing, footwear and equipment, as well as at till points.  Eurostop’s new Café Mode POS will enable customers to pay for store items, food and drinks at the same time in its top floor café, famous for its far-reaching views.

DataStax survey show challenges with architecture modernisation

DataStax announced results from an IT Architecture Modernisation Trends survey, showing that 99 percent of IT execs were having problems with architecture modernisation and 98 percent report challenges with their corporate data architectures with vendor lock-in of particular concern.

The survey, conducted in conjunction with Dimensional Research and DataStax, takes the pulse of IT architecture modernisation trends by investigating current experiences with and plans to reduce complexity and cost around architecture modernization. Respondents included more than 300 executives who work for companies of more than 5,000 employees.

IBM and Cisco lead in GlobalData’s Industrial Internet numbers

IBM, Fanuc and Cisco are the leading companies in the Industrial Internet sector, according to the latest “Thematic Scorecard” for the industrial automation sector from GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The three companies all gained the highest Thematic score (five out of five) in GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard for the industrial automation sector. A Thematic score of five out of five indicates that this theme will significantly improve their future performance.

Salesforce provides partners with three new tools

Salesforce has enhanced its Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management (PRM) service with three new tools.

The first new tool, called Einstein Analytics, helps businesses identify and prioritise leads using AI-driven insights. Through its powerful data mining capabilities, the software uses past lead and opportunity performance to provide predictive recommendations for the future.

Salesforce said Einstein Discovery could analyse recent opportunities and find that trade show attendance strongly impacts winning deals, which would enable firms to allocate budget for shows and extend invites to prospective customers.

Cisco considers buying Signal Sciences

Cisco is mulling another security purchase to build out its growing portfolio.

The tech giant is in talks to purchase Signal Sciences, a Los Angeles cybersecurity startup in which Cisco already has a relationship. Five-year-old Signal Sciences is a web application security company that develops software to protect applications running in private data centres and the cloud.